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COPE guns for mayor’s office

Green Party and COPE both announce final candidates
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COPE candidates (from left to right) Sid Chow Tan, Jennifer O'Keefe, Gayle Gavin, Keith Higgins Meena Wong, Lisa Barrett, Wilson Munoz, Tim Louis and Audrey Siegl. Photo: Andrew Fleming

For the first time in 12 years, the Coalition of Progressive Electors is running a candidate for mayor. Meena Wong was chosen Sept. 7 at a party nomination meeting held at the Japanese Hall, two days after a press conference was held on the steps of city hall to announce her candidacy.

COPE is the city’s only political party where candidates are chosen by members, and it turns out yet another member, Anthony Guitar, also wanted to run for mayor but hit a paperwork filing error.

Not that it was close.

Wong earned 193 votes of the 216 ballots cast to become the left-wing party’s first mayoral candidate since Larry Campbell won a landslide victory in 2002.  It is the Vancouver Coastal Health mental health recovery worker’s second stab at seeking public office after running as the NDP candidate for Vancouver South in the 2011 federal election, where she came in third with 19 per cent of votes. If elected, Wong would be the city’s first female mayor and first one of Chinese descent. She also served previously as an assistant to former Toronto city councillor and NDP MP Olivia Chow, who is running for mayor of Toronto.

Wong, 53, said she wants to make North America’s most expensive city more affordable for non-affluent residents.

“We have a duty to each other and to this city to right what is wrong,” said Wong. “We have a duty to our children who cannot afford to live in this city, we have a duty to seniors who cannot afford to age with dignity… I think Vancouver housing prices are way too high and as a city government, we need to look at that.”

Seven candidates for city council were also picked from a total of 12 nominees. Tim Louis, party co-chair and a former two-time councillor, earned the most votes overall with 179, followed by Sid Chow Tan, Audrey Siegl, Gayle Gavin, Lisa Barrett, Keith Higgins and Jennifer O’Keeffe. John Yano and Wilson Munoz tied for the eighth and final spot and a decision of which of them will run has not yet been announced.

Diana Day, Ilana Shecter, Ralph Fraatz, Heidi Nagtegaal and Kombii Nanjalah are COPE’s five candidates for school board. Four candidates for park board — Imtiaz Popat, Urooba Jamal, Ezra Bloom and Anita Romaniuk — were also chosen.

The plan was to choose five park board candidates but party policy requires at least one be of aboriginal descent. Jamie Lee Hamilton, one of two candidates who fit the bill, withdrew from the race last week while Tracey Morrison was mysteriously absent. According to executive director Sean Antrim, the party’s indigenous equity caucus will instead decide on a fifth candidate.

The Green Party confirmed its own candidates at a special general meeting also held Sunday. Park board candidates Stuart Mackinnon and Michael Wiebe and school board candidates Mischa Oak and Janet Fraser are now part of a Green slate that includes Pete Fry, Cleta Brown and incumbent councillor Adriane Carr running for city council. There will not be a Green candidate for mayor.

"I’m thrilled to have our whole team in place — and what a fabulous team,” said Carr in a press release announcing the decision. “By electing three Greens to council, two Greens to park board and two Greens to school board, Vancouverites will get not only incredibly hard-working representatives who will put public interest first, but also strong teams that will bring sorely needed balance and a collaborative approach to each governing body.”

The election is Nov. 15.